The present invention relates to a paper sheet sorting apparatus in which paper sheets of different types can be sorted and stacked.
A bill sorting apparatus has been proposed as an apparatus of this type in which a plurality of bills of various denominations are received once, the denominations thereof are automatically discriminated one by one, discriminated bills of each denomination are stacked in corresponding stacking units upon counting them, thus sorting the bills. In such a conventional apparatus, the number of different denominations of bills currently in use does not correspond to that of the stacking units, and only a limited number of stacking units are provided. Each stacking unit is assigned a predetermined denomination, and this assignment cannot be changed.
The above-mentioned bill sorting operation is nowadays performed in various types of business, and the properties of bills ar different in each type of business. Therefore, predetermined bills are conventionally stacked in certain stacking units, resulting in low efficiency. For example, one conventional apparatus has four stacking units of $100, $50, $20 and $10. However, one business may wish to stack bills of other denominations in addition to these denominations. In another business, there are few $10 bills, and there are many $20 bills in comparison to $100 and $50 bills. In this case, $20 bills are stacked in two stacking units, and $100 and $50 bills are respectively stored in corresponding stacking units, and $10 bills are rejected and not stacked (not sorted). The reason is that, when one stacking unit becomes full, the sorting operation must be stopped. Furthermore, still another business may wish to stack unspecified denominations in one stacking unit and stacking specified denomination in all other stacking units. This kind of free sorting stacking function is demanded, but only fixed sorting stacking function is provided by conventional apparatus.